“I Am Too Close …”

“I am too close …”

I am too close for him to dream of me. I don't flutter over him, don't flee him beneath the roots of trees. I am too close. The caught fish doesn't sing with my voice. The ring doesn't roll from my finger. I am too close. The great house is on fire without me calling for help. Too close for one of my hairs to turn into the rope of the alarm bell. Too close to enter as the guest before whom walls retreat. I'll never die again so lightly, so far beyond my body, so unknowingly as I did once in his dream. I am too close, too close, I hear the word hiss and see its glistening scales as I lie motionless in his embrace. He's sleeping, more accessible at this moment to an usherette he saw once in a travelling circus with one lion, than to me, who lies at his side. A valley now grows within him for her, rusty-leaved, with a snowcapped mountain at one end rising in the azure air. I am too close to fall from that sky like a gift from heaven. My cry could only waken him. And what a poor gift: I, confined to my own form, when I used to be a birch, a lizard shedding times and satin skins in many shimmering hues. And I possessed the gift of vanishing before astonished eyes, which is the richest of all. I am too close, too close for him to dream of me. I slip my arm from underneath his sleeping head – it's numb, swarming with imaginary pins. A host of fallen angels perches on each tip, waiting to be counted.

Wisława Szymborska (from Salt 1962)

“Over Wine”

He glanced, gave me extra charm and I took it as my own. Happily I gulped a star.

I let myself be invented, modelled on my own reflection in his eyes. I dance, dance, dance in the stir of sudden wings.

The chair’s a chair, the wine is wine, in a wineglass that’s the wineglass standing there by standing there. Only I’m imaginary, make-believe beyond belief, so fictitious that it hurts.

And I tell him tales about ants that die of love beneath a dandelion’s constellation. I swear a white rose will sing if you sprinkle it with wine.

I laugh and I tilt my head cautiously, as if to check whether the invention works. I dance, dance inside my stunned skin, in his arms that create me.

Eve from the rib, Venus from foam, Minerva from Jupiter’s head – all three were more real than me.

When he isn’t looking at me, I try to catch my reflection on the wall. And I see the nail where a picture used to be.

Wisława Szymborska (from Salt 1962)

“A Moment in Troy”

Little girls – skinny, resigned to freckles that won’t go away, not turning any heads as they walk across the eyelids of the world, looking just like Mom or Dad, and sincerely horrified by it – in the middle of dinner, in the middle of a book, while studying the mirror, may suddenly be taken off to Troy.

In the grand boudoir of a wink they all turn into beautiful Helens.

They ascend the royal staircase in the rustling of silk and admiration. They feel light. They all know that beauty equals rest, that lips mold the speech’s meaning, and gestures sculpt themselves in inspired nonchalance.

Their small faces worth dismissing envoys for extend proudly on necks that merit countless sieges.

Those tall, dark movie stars, their girlfriends’ older brothers, the teacher from art class, alas, they must all be slain.

Little girls observe disaster from a tower of smiles.

Little girls wring their hands in intoxicating mock despair.

Little girls against a backdrop of destruction, 3 with flaming towns for tiaras, in earrings of pandemic lamentation.

Pale and tearless. Triumphant. Sated with the view. Dreading only the inevitable moment of return.

Little girls returning.

Wisława Szymborska (from Salt 1962)

“Golden Anniversary”

They must have been different once, fire and water, miles apart, robbing and giving in desire, that assault on one another’s otherness. Embracing, they appropriated and expropriated each other for so long that only air was left within their arms, transparent as if after lightning.

One day the answer came before the questions. Another night they guessed their eye’s expression by the type of silence in the dark.

Gender fades, mysteries molder, distinctions meet in all-resemblance just as all colours coincide in white.

Which of them is doubled and which missing? Which one is smiling with two smiles? Whose voice forms a two-part canon? When both heads nod, which one agrees? Whose gesture lifts the teaspoon to their lips? Who’s flayed the other one alive? Which one lives and which has died entangled in the lines of whose palm?

They gazed into each other’s eyes and slowly twins emerged. Familiarity breeds the most perfect of mothers - it favors neither of the little darlings, it scarcely can recall which one is which.

On this festive day, their golden anniversary, A dove, seen identically, perched on the windowsill.

Wisława Szymborska (from Salt 1962)

“Without A Title”

The two of them were left so long alone, so much in un-love, without a word to spare, what they deserve by now is probably a miracle – a thunderbolt, or turning into stone. Two million books in print on Greek mythology, but there’s no rescue in them for this pair.

If at least someone would ring the bell, or if something would flare and disappear again, no matter from where and no matter when, no matter if it’s fun, fear, joy or grief.

But nothing of the sort. No aberration, no deviation from the well-made plot this bourgeois drama holds. There’ll be a dot above the “i” inside their tidy separation.

Against the backdrop of the steadfast wall, pitying one another, they both stare into the mirror, but there’s nothing there except their sensible reflections. All they see is the two people in the frame. Matter is on alert. All its dimensions, everything in between the ground and sky keeps close watch on the fates that we were born with and sees to it that they remain the same – although we still don’t see the reason why a sudden deer bounding across this room would shatter the entire universe.

Wisława Szymborska (from Salt 1962)

“Lot’s Wife”

They say I looked back out of curiosity. But I could have had other reasons. I looked back mourning my silver bowl. Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap. So I wouldn't have to keep staring at the righteous nape of my husband Lot's neck. From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead he wouldn't so much as hesitate. From the disobedience of the meek. Checking for pursuers. Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed his mind. Our two daughters were already vanishing over the hilltop. I felt age within me. Distance. The futility of wandering. Torpor. I looked back setting my bundle down. I looked back not knowing where to set my foot. Serpents appeared on my path, spiders, field mice, baby vultures. They were neither good nor evil now - every living thing was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic. I looked back in desolation. In shame because we had stolen away. Wanting to cry out, to go home. Or only when a sudden gust of wind unbound my hair and lifted up my robe. It seemed to me that they were watching from the walls of Sodom and bursting into thunderous laughter again and again. I looked back in anger. To savor their terrible fate. I looked back for all the reasons given above. I looked back involuntarily. It was only a rock that turned underfoot, growling at me. It was a sudden crack that stopped me in my tracks. A hamster on its hind paws tottered on the edge. It was then we both glanced back. No, no. I ran on, I crept, I flew upward until darkness fell from the heavens and with it scorching gravel and dead birds. I couldn't breathe and spun around and around. Anyone who saw me must have thought I was dancing. It's not inconceivable that my eyes were open. It's possible I fell facing the city.

Wisława Szymborska (from A Large Number 1976)

“Nothing Twice”

Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.

Even if there is no one dumber, and you’re the planets biggest dunce, you can’t repeat the class in summer: this course is only offered once.

No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with exactly the same kisses.

One day perhaps some idle tongue mentions your name by accident: I feel as if a rose were flung into the room, all hue and scent.

The next day, though you’re here with me, I can’t help looking at the clock: A rose? A rose? What could that be? Is it a flower or a rock?

Why do we treat the fleeting day with so much needless fear and sorrow? It’s in its nature not to stay: Today is always gone tomorrow.

With smiles and kisses, we prefer to seek accord beneath our star, although we’re different (we concur) just as two drops of water are.

Wisława Szymborska (from Calling out to Yeti 1957)

“Born”

So this is his mother. This small woman. The gray-eyed procreator.

The boat in which, years ago, he sailed to shore.

The boat from which he stepped into the world, into un-eternity.

Genetrix of the man with whom I leap through fire.

So this is she, the only one who didn’t take him finished and complete.

She herself pulled him into the skin I know, bound him to the bones that are hidden from me.

She herself raised the gray eyes that he raised to me.

So this is she, his Alpha. Why has he shown her to me.

Born. So he was born, too. Born like everyone else. Like me, who will die.

The son of an actual woman. A new arrival from the body’s depths. A voyager to Omega

Subjed to his own absence, on every front, at any moment.

He hits his head against a wall 9 that won’t give way forever.

His movements dodge and parry the universal verdict.

I realized that his journey was already halfway over.

But he didn’t tell me that, no.

“This is my mother.” was all he said. Wisława Szymborska (from No End of Fun 1967)

“Parable”

Some fishermen pulled a bottle from the deep. It held a piece of paper, with these words: “Somebody save me! I’m here. The ocean cast me on this desert island. I am standing on the shore waiting for help. Hurry! I’m here!” “There’s no date. I bet it’s already too late anyway. It could have been floating for years,” the first fisherman said. “And he doesn’t say where. It’s not even clear which ocean,” the second fisherman said. “It’s not too late, or too far. The island Here is everywhere,” the third fisherman said. They all felt awkward. No one spoke. That’s how it goes with universal truths.

Wisława Szymborska (from Salt 1962)

“Life While-You-Wait”

Life While-You-Wait. Performance without rehearsal. Body without alterations. Head without premeditation.

I know nothing of the role I play. I only know it’s mine, I can’t exchange it.

I have to guess on the spot just what this play’s all about.

Ill-prepared for the privilege of living, I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands. I improvise, although I loathe improvisation. I trip at every step over my own ignorance. I can’t conceal my hayseed manners. My instincts are for hammy histrionics. Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more. Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

Words and impulses you can’t take back, stars you’ll never get counted, your character like a raincoat you button on the run – the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

If I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance, or repeat a single Thursday that has passed! But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen. Is it fair, I ask (my voice a little hoarse, since I couldn’t even clear my throat offstage).

You’d be wrong to think that it’s just a slapdash quiz taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no. I’m standing on the set and I see how strong it is. The props are surprisingly precise. The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer. The farthest galaxies have been turned on. Oh no, there’s no question, this must be the premiere. And whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done.

Wisława Szymborska (from A Large Number 1976)

“Evaluation of an Unwritten Poem”

In the poems opening words the authoress asserts that while the Earth is small, the sky is excessively large and in it there are, I quote, ‘too many stars for our own good.”

In her depiction of the sky, one detects a certain helplessness, the authoress is lost in a terrifying expanse, she is startled by the planet’s lifelessness, and within her mind (which can only be called imprecise) a question soon arises: whether we are, in the end, alone under the sun, all suns that ever shone.

In spite of the laws of probability! And today’s universally accepted assumptions! In the face of the irrefutable evidence that may fall Into human hands an day now! That’s poetry for you.

Meanwhile our Lady Bard returns to Earth a planet, so she claims, which ‘makes its rounds without eyewitnesses,” the only “science fiction that our cosmos can afford.” The despair of a Pascal (1623 – 162, note mine) is, the authoress implies, unrivalled on any, say, Andromeda or Cassiopeia. Out solitary existence exacerbates our sense of obligation, and raises the inevitable question, How are we to live et cetera? since “we can’t avoid the void.” “ ‘My God,’ man calls out to Himself, ‘have mercy on me, I beseech thee, show me the way …’ ”

The authoress is distressed by the thought of life squandered so freely, as if our supplies were boundless. She is likewise worried by wars, which are, in her perverse opinion, always lost on both sides, and by the “authoritorture” (sic!) of some people by others. Her moralistic intentions glimmer throughout the poem. They might shine brighter beneath a less naïve pen.

Not under this one, alas. Her fundamentally unpersuasive thesis (that we may well be, in the end, alone under the sun, all suns that ever shone) combined with her lackadaisical style (a mixture of lofty rhetoric and ordinary speech) forces the question: Whom might this piece convince? The answer can only be: No one. Q.E.D. Wisława Szymborska (from A Large Number 1976) 13

“The Joy of Writing”

Why does this written doe bound through these written woods? For a drink of written water from a spring whose surface will Xerox her soft muzzle? Why does she lift her head; does she hear something? Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth, she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips. Silence – this word also rustles across the page and parts the boughs that have sprouted from the word “woods.”

Lying in wait, se to pounce on the blank page, are letters up to no good, clutches of clauses so subordinate they’ll never let her get away.

Each drip of ink contains a fair supply of hunters, equipped with slanting eyes behind their sights, prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment, surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns.

They forget that what’s here isn’t life. Other laws, black on white, obtain. The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say, and will, if I wish, divide into tiny eternities , full of bullets stopped in mid-flight. Not a thing will ever happen unless I say so. Without my blessing, not a leaf will fall, not a blade of grass will bend beneath that little hoof’s full stop.

Is there then a world where I rule absolutely on fate? A time I bind with chains of signs? An existence become endless at my bidding? The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.

Wisława Szymborska (from No End of Fun 1967)

“Autotomy”

In danger, the holothurian cuts itself in two. It abandons one self to a hungry world and with the other self it flees.

It violently divides into doom and salvation, retribution and reward, what has been and what will be.

An abyss appears in the middle of its body between what instantly become two foreign shores.

Life on one shore, death on the other. Here hope and there despair.

If there are scales, the pans don’t move. If there is justice, this is it.

To die just as required, without excess. To grow back just what’s needed from what’s left.

We, too, can divide ourselves, it’s true. But only into flesh and a broken whisper. Into flesh and poetry.

The throat on one side, laughter on the other, quiet, quickly dying out.

Here the heavey heard, there non omnis moriar – just three little words, like a flight’s three feathers.

The abyss doesn’t divide us. The abyss surrounds us. in memorium Halina Poswiatowska

Wisława Szymborska (from Could Have 1972)

“The Three Oddest Words”

When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing, I make something no nonbeing can hold.

Wisława Szymborska (from New Poems 1997)

“Birthday”

So much world all at once – how it rustles and bustles! Moraines and morays and morasses and mussels, the flame , the flamingo, the flounder, the feather – how to line them all up, how to put them together? All the thickets and crickets and creepers and creeks! The beeches and leeches alone could take weeks. Chinchillas, gorillas, and sarsaparillas – thanks so much, but all this excess of kindness could kill us. Where’s the jar for this burgeoning burdock, brooks’ babble, rooks' squabble, snakes’ squiggle, abundance, and trouble? How to plug up the gold mines and pin down the fox, how to cope with the lynx, bobolinks, streptococs! Take dioxide: a lightweight, but might in deeds’ what about octopodes, what about centipedes? I could look into prices, but don’t have the nerve: these are products I just can’t afford, don’t deserve. Isn’t sunset a little too much for two eyes that, who knows, may not open to see the sun rise? I am just passing through, it’s a five minute stop. I won’t catch what is distant; what’s too close, I’ll mix up. While trying to plumb what the void’s inner sense is, I’m bound to pass by all these poppies and pansies. What a loss when you think how much effort was spent perfecting this petal, this pistil, this scent for the one-time appearance, which is all they’re allowed, so aloofly, precise and so fragilely proud.

Wisława Szymborska (from Could Have 1972)

“Astonishment”

Why after all this one and not the rest? Why this specific self, not in a nest, but a house? Sewn up not in scales, but skin? Not topped off by a leaf, but by a face? Why on earth now, on Tuesday of all days, and why on earth, pinned down by this star’s pin? In spite of years of my not being here? In spite of seas of all these dates and fates, these cells, celestials and coelenterates? What is it really that made me appear neither an inch nor half a globe too far, neither a minute nor aeons too early? What made me fill myself with me so squarely? Why am I staring now into the dark and muttering this unending monologue just like the growling thing we call a dog?

Wisława Szymborska (from Could Have 1972)

“Allegro Ma Non Troppo”

Life, you’re beautiful (I say) you just couldn’t get more fecund, more befrogged or nightingaley, more anthilful or sproutsprouting.

I’m trying to court life’s favour, to get into its good fraces, to anticipate its whims. I’m always the first to bow, always there where it can see me with my humble, reverent face, soaring on the wings of rapture, falling under waves of wonder.

Oh how grassy is this hopper, How his berry ripely rasps. I would never have conceived it if I weren’t conceived myself!

Life (I say) I’ve no idea what I could compare you to. No one else can make a pine cone and then make the pine cone’s clone.

I praise your inventiveness, bounty, sweep, exactitude, sense of order – gifts that border on witchcraft and wizardry.

I just don’t want to upset you, tease or anger, vex or rile. For millennia, I’ve been trying to appease you with my smile.

I tug at life by its leaf hem: will it stop for me, just once, momentarily forgetting to what end it runs and runs? Wisława Szymborska (from Could Have 1972)

“Starvation Camp Near Jaslo”

Write it down. Write it. With ordinary ink on ordinary paper: they weren’t given any food, they all died of hunger. All. How many? It’s a large meadow. How much grass per head? Write down: I don’t know. History rounds off skeletons to zero. A thousand and one is still only a thousand. That one seems never to have existed: a fictitious fetus, an empty cradle, a primer opened for no one, air that laughs, cries and grows, stairs for a void bounding out to the garden, no one’s spot in the ranks.

It became flesh right here, on this meadow. But the meadow’s silent, like a witness who’s been bought. Sunny. Green. A forest close at hand, with wood to chew on, drops beneath the bark to drink – a view served round the clock, until you go blind. Above, a bird whose shadow flicked its nourishing wings across their lips. Jaws dropped, teeth clattered.

At night a sickle glistened in the sky and reaped the dark for dreamed-of loaves. Hands came flying from blackened icons, each holding an empty chalice. A man swayed on a grill of barbed wire. Some sang, with dirt in their mouths. That lovely song about war hitting you straight in the heart. Write how quiet it is. Yes.

Wisława Szymborska (from Salt 1962)

“Some People”

Some people flee some other people. In some country under a sun and some clouds.

They abandon something, close to all they’ve got, sown fields, some chickens, dogs, mirrors in which fire now preens.

Their shoulders bear pitchers and bundles. The emptier they get, the heavier they grow.

What happens quietly: someone’s dropping from exhaustion. What happens loudly: someone’s bread is ripped away, some tries to shake a limp child back to life.

Always another road ahead of them, always another wrong bridge across an oddly reddish river. Around them, some gunshots, now nearer, now farther away, above them a plane seems to circle.

Some invisibility would come in handy, some grayish stoniness, or, better yet, some nonexistence for a shorter or a longer while.

Something else will happen, only where and what. Someone will come at them, only when and who, in how many shapes, with what intentions. If he has a choice, maybe he won’t be the enemy and will let them live some sort of life.

Wisława Szymborska (from New Poems 1997)

“Tortures”

Nothing has changed. The body is a reservoir of pain; it has to eat and breathe the air, and sleep; it has thin skin and the blood is just beneath it; it has a good supply of teeth and fingernails; its bones can be broken; it’s joints can be stretched. In tortures, all of this is considered.

Nothing has changed. They body still trembles as it trembled before Rome was founded and after, in the twentieth century before and after Christ. Tortures are just what they were, only the earth has shrunk and whatever goes on sounds as if it’s just a room away.

Nothing has changed. Except there are more people, and new offenses have sprung up beside the old ones – real, make-believe, short-lived and nonexistent. But the cry with which the body answers for them was, is, and will be a cry of innocence in keeping with the age-old scale and pitch.

Nothing has changed. Except perhaps the manners, ceremonies, dances. The gesture of the hands shielding the head has nonetheless remained the same. The body writes, jerks and tugs, falls to the ground when shoved, pulls up its knees, bruises, swells, drools and bleeds.

Nothing has changed. Except the run of the rivers, the shape of forests, shores, deserts, and glaciers. The little soul roams among those landscapes, disappears, returns, draws near, moves away, evasive and a stranger to itself, now sure, now uncertain of its own existence, whereas the body is and is and is and has nowhere to go.

Wisława Szymborska (from The People on the Bridge 1986)

“Still”

Across the country’s plains sealed boxcars are carrying names: how long will they travel, how far, will they ever leave the boxcar – don’t ask, I can’t say, I don’t know.

The name Nathan beats the wall with his fist, the name Isaac sings a mad hymn, the name Aaron is dying of thirst, the name Sarah begs water for him.

Don’t jump from the boxcar, name David. In these lands you’re a name to avoid, you're bound for defeat, you’re a sign point out those who must be destroyed.

At least give your son a Slavic name: he’ll need it. Here people count hairs and examine the shape of your eyelids to tell right from wrong, “ours” from “theirs.”

Don’t jump yet. Your son’s name will be Lech. Don’t jump yet. The time’s still not right. Don’t jump yet. The clattering wheels are mocked by the echoes of night.

Clouds of people passed over this plain. Vast clouds, but they held little rain – just one tear, that’s a fact, just one tear. Dark forest. The tracks disappear.

That’s-a-fact. The rail and the wheels. That’s-a-fact. A forest, no fields. That’s-a-fact. And their silence once more, that’s-a-fact, drums on my silent door.

Wisława Szymborska (from Calling Out to Yeti 1957)

“An Opinion on the Question of Pornography”

There’s nothing more debauched than thinking. This sort of wantonness runs wild like a wind-borne weed on a plot laid out for daises.

Nothing’s sacred for those who think. Calling things brazenly by name, risqué analyses, salacious syntheses, frenzied, rakish chases after the bare facts, the filthy fingering of touchy subjects, discussion in heat – it’s music to their ears.

In broad daylight or under cover of night they form circles, triangles or pairs. Their partners’ age or sex are unimportant. Their eyes glitter, their cheeks are flushed. Friend leads friend astray. Degenerate daughters corrupt their fathers. A brother pimps for his little sister.

They prefer the fruits from the forbidden tree of knowledge to the pink buttocks found in glossy magazines – all that ultimately simple hearted smut. The books they relish have no pictures. What variety they have lies in certain phrases Marked with a thumbnail or a crayon.

It’s shocking, the positions, the unchecked simplicity with which one mind contrives to fertilise another! Such positions the Kama Sutra itself doesn’t know.

During these trysts of theirs, the only thing that’s steamy is the tea. People sit on their chairs and move their lips.

Everyone crosses his own legs so that one foot is resting on the floor while the other dangles freely in midair. Only now and then does somebody get up, go to the window, and through a crack in the curtains take a peep out at the street.

Wisława Szymborska (from The People on the Bridge 1986)

“Discovery”

I believe in the great discovery. I believe in the man who will make the discovery. I believe in the fear of the man who will make the discovery.

I believe in his face going white, his queasiness, his upper lip drenched in cold sweat.

I belive in the burning of his notes, burning them into ashes, burning them to the last scrap.

I believe in the scattering of numbers, scattering them without regret.

I believe in the man’s haste, in the precision of his movements, in his free will.

I believe in the shattering of tablets, the pouring out of liquids, the extinguishing of rays.

I am convinced this will end well, that it will not be too late, that it will take place without witnesses.

I’m sure no one will find out what happened, not the wife, not the wall, not even the bird that might squeal in its song.

I believe in the refusal to take part. I believe in the ruined career. I believe in the wasted years of work. I believe in the secret taken to the grave.

These words soar for me beyond all rules without seeking support from actual examples. My faith is strong, blind and without foundation.

Wisława Szymborska (from Could Have 1972)

“Ruben’s Women”

Titanettes, female fauna, naked as the rumbling of barrels. They roost in rampled beds, asleep, with mouths agape, ready to crow. Their pupils have fled into flesh and sound the glandular depths from which yeast seeps into their blood.

Daughters of the Baroque. Dough thickens in troughs, baths steam, wines blush, cloudy piglets careen across the sky, triumphant trumpets neigh the carnal alarm.

O pumpkin plump! O plumped-up corpulence inflated double by disrobing and tripled by your tumultuous poses! O fatty dishes of love!

Their skinny sisters woke up earlier, before dawn broke and shone upon the painting. And no one saw how they went single file along the canvas’s unpainted side.

Exiled by style. Only their ribs stood out. With birdlike feet and palms, they strove to take wing on their jutting shoulder blades.

The thirteenth century would have given them golden halos. The twentieth silver screens. The seventeenth, alas, holds nothing for the unvoluptuous.

For even the sky bulges here with pudgy angles and a chubby god – thick-whiskered Phoebus, on a sweaty steed, riding straight into the seething bedchamber.

Wisława Szymborska (from Salt 1962)

“Bodybuilders’ Contest”

From scalp to sole, all muscles in slow motion. The ocean of his torso drips with lotion. The king of all is he who preens and wrestles with sinews twisted into monstrous pretzels.

Onstage, he grapples with a grizzly bear the deadlier for not really being there. Three unseen panthers are in turn laid low, Each with one smoothly choreographed blow.

He grunts while showing his poses and paces. His back alone has twenty different faces. The mammoth fist he raises as he wins is tribute to the force of vitamins.

Wisława Szymborska (from Salt 1962)

“A Byzantine Mosaic”

“O Theotropia, my empress consort.”

“O Theodendron, my consort emporer.”

“How fair thou art, my hollow-cheeked beloved.”

“How fine art thou, blue-lipped spouse.”

“Thou art so wondrous frail beneath thy bell-like gown, the alarum of which, if but removed, would waken all my kingdom.”

“How excellently mortified thou art, my lord and master, to mine own shadow a twinnèd shade.”

“Oh how it pleaseth me To see my lady’s palms, Like unto palm leaves verily, clasped to her mantle’s throat.”

“Wherewith, raised heavenward, I would pray thee mercy for our son, For he is not such as we, O Theodendron.”

“Heaven forfend, O Theotropia. pray, what might he be, begotten and brought forth in godly dignity?”

‘I will confess anon, and thou shalt hear me. Not a princeling but a sinner have I borne thee. Pink and shameless as a piglet, plump and merry, verily, all chubby wrists and ringlets came he rolling unto us.”

“He is roly-poly?”

“That he is.”

“He is voracious?”

“Yes, in truth.”

“His skin is milk and roses?” 28

“As thou sayest.”

“What, pray, does our archimandrite say, a man of most penetrating gnosis? What say our consecrated eremites, most holy skeletesses? How should they strip the fiendish infant of his swaddling silks?”

“Metamorphosis miraculous still lies within our Saviour’s power. Yet thou, on spying the babes unsightliness, shalt not cry oyt and rouse the sleeping demon from his rest?”

“I am thy twin in horror. Lead on, Theotropia.”

Wisława Szymborska (from No End of Fun 1967)

“Utopia” Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here with branches disentangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple, sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista: the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction. Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley. Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited, and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do here is leave and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.

Wislawa Szymborska (from A large number 1976)

“On Death, without Exaggeration” It can’t take a joke, find a star, make a bridge. It knows nothing about weaving, mining, farming, building ships, or baking cakes.

In our planning for tomorrow, it has the final word, which is always beside the point.

It can’t even get the things done that are part of its trade: dig a grave, make a coffin, clean up after itself.

Preoccupied with killing, it does the job awkwardly, without system or skill. As though each of us were its first kill.

Oh, it has its triumphs, but look at its countless defeats, missed blows, and repeat attempts!

Sometimes it isn’t strong enough to swat a fly from the air. Many are the caterpillars that have outcrawled it.

All those bulbs, pods, tentacles, fins, tracheae, nuptial plumage, and winter fur show that it has fallen behind with its halfhearted work.

Ill will won’t help and even our lending a hand with wars and coups d’etat is so far not enough.

Hearts beat inside eggs. Babies’ skeletons grow. Seeds, hard at work, sprout their first tiny pair of leaves and sometimes even tall trees fall away.

Whoever claims that it’s omnipotent is himself living proof that it’s not.

There’s no life that couldn’t be immortal if only for a moment.

Death always arrives by that very moment too late.

In vain it tugs at the knob of the invisible door. As far as you’ve come can’t be undone.

Wislawa Szymborska (from The People on the Bridge 1986)

“Possibilities” I prefer movies. I prefer cats. I prefer the oaks along the Warta. I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky. I prefer myself liking people to myself loving mankind. I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case. I prefer the color green. I prefer not to maintain that reason is to blame for everything. I prefer exceptions. I prefer to leave early. I prefer talking to doctors about something else. I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations. I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems. I prefer, where love’s concerned, nonspecific anniversaries that can be celebrated every day. I prefer moralists who promise me nothing. I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind. I prefer the earth in civvies. I prefer conquered to conquering countries. I prefer having some reservations. I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order. I prefer Grimms’ fairy tales to the newspapers’ front pages. I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves. I prefer dogs with uncropped tails. I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark. I prefer desk drawers. I prefer many things that I haven’t mentioned here to many things I’ve also left unsaid. I prefer zeroes on the loose to those lined up behind a cipher. I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars. I prefer to knock on wood. I prefer not to ask how much longer and when. I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility that existence has its own reason for being.

Wislawa Szymborska (from Nothing Twice 1997)

“Love at First Sight” They’re both convinced that a sudden passion joined them. Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still.

Since they’d never met before, they’re sure that there’d been nothing between them. But what’s the word from the streets, staircases, hallways— perhaps they’ve passed by each other a million times?

I want to ask them if they don’t remember— a moment face to face in some revolving door? perhaps a “sorry” muttered in a crowd? a curt “wrong number” caught in the receiver?— but I know the answer. No, they don’t remember.

They’d be amazed to hear that Chance has been toying with them now for years.

Not quite ready yet to become their Destiny, it pushed them close, drove them apart, it barred their path, stifling a laugh, and then leaped aside.

There were signs and signals, even if they couldn’t read them yet. Perhaps three years ago or just last Tuesday a certain leaf fluttered from one shoulder to another? Something was dropped and then picked up. Who knows, maybe the ball that vanished into childhood’s thicket?

There were doorknobs and doorbells where one touch had covered another beforehand. Suitcases checked and standing side by side. One night, perhaps, the same dream, grown hazy by morning.

Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.

Wislawa Szymborska (from View with A Grain of Sand 1993)

“Some People Like Poetry”

Some people— that means not everyone. Not even most of them, only a few. Not counting school, where you have to, and poets themselves, you might end up with something like two per thousand.

Like— but then, you can like chicken noodle soup, or compliments, or the color blue, your old scarf, your own way, petting the dog.

Poetry— but what is poetry anyway? More than one rickety answer has tumbled since that question first was raised. But I just keep on not knowing, and I cling to that like a redemptive handrail.

Wislawa Szymborska (from The New Republic Magazine 1996)

“Hatred Poem” See how efficient it still is, how it keeps itself in shape— our century’s hatred.

How easily it vaults the tallest obstacles.

How rapidly it pounces, tracks us down.

It is not like other feelings.

At once both older and younger.

It gives birth itself to the reasons that give it life.

When it sleeps, it’s never eternal rest.

And sleeplessness won’t sap its strength; it feeds it.

One religion or another— whatever gets it ready, in position.

One fatherland or another— whatever helps it get a running start.

Just also works well at the outset until hate gets its own momentum going.

Hatred. Hatred.

Its face twisted in a grimace of erotic ecstasy.

Oh these other feelings, listless weaklings.

Since when does brotherhood draw crowds? 37

Has compassion ever finished first?

Does doubt ever really rouse the rabble?

Only hatred has just what it takes.

Gifted, diligent, hard-working.

Need we mention all the songs it has composed?

All the pages it has added to our history books?

All the human carpets it has spread over countless city squares and football fields?

Let’s face it: it knows how to make beauty.

The splendid fire-glow in midnight skies.

Magnificent bursting bombs in rosy dawns.

You can’t deny the inspiring pathos of ruins and a certain bawdy humor to be found in the sturdy column jutting from their midst.

Hatred is a master of contrast—between explosions and dead quiet, red blood and white snow.

Above all, it never tires of its leitmotif—the impeccable executioner towering over its soiled victim.

It’s always ready for new challenges. 38

If it has to wait awhile, it will.

They say it’s blind. Blind?

It has a sniper’s keen sight and gazes unflinchingly at the future as only it can.

Wislawa Szymborska (from View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems 1995)

“One Version of Events”

If indeed we were allowed to choose, we must have been mulling things over for a long time.

The bodies offered us were uncomfortable and wore out dreadfully.

The means of satisfying hunger sickened us. The passive inheritance of traits and the tyranny of organs put us off.

A world that was meant to surround us, was in endless decay. The effects of causes wreaked heavy havoc on it.

Of all those fates given to us for inspection most we rejected in sorrow and horror.

Questions arose such as these: what use is there in the painful delivery of a dead child? And why be a sailor who never reaches port?

We agreed to death but not in every form. Love attracted us, sure, but a love that kept its word.

The fickleness of judgments and impermanence of masterpieces scared us off from the service of art.

Everyone wanted a homeland without neighbors and to live their entire lives in the interval between wars.

None of us wanted to seize power or be subject to it, none of us wanted to fall victim to our own delusions or anyone else’s.

There were no volunteers for tight crowds, parades, and even less so for vanishing tribes; but without them, history never would have been able to march on through centuries foreseen.

Meanwhile a goodly number of lighted stars had gone out and grown cold. It was high time for a decision.

After many reservations there finally appeared a few candidates for discoverers and healers, for philosophers without acclaim, for several anonymous gardeners, musicians, and conjurers

—though for want of other submissions even these lives couldn’t be fulfilled.

The whole thing had to be rethought yet again.

We were offered a package tour, a journey from which we’d return fast and for certain.

A chance to remain outside eternity, which is, after all, monotonous and ignorant of the concept of passing, might never have come again.

We were riddled with doubt whether, knowing it all beforehand, we indeed knew it all.

Is such a premature choice any choice at all? Wouldn’t it be better to let it pass? And if we are to choose, to make the choice there?

We took a look at Earth. Some adventurers were living there already. 41

A feeble plant was clinging to a rock with reckless trust that the wind would not uproot it.

A smallish animal was crawling out of its nook with an effort and a hope that surprised us.

We found ourselves too cautious, small-minded, and ridiculous.

Anyway, soon our numbers began to fade. The least patient ones went off somewhere. Theirs was a trial by fire —that much was clear. Indeed, they were lighting one on the steep bank of a real river.

Several were already heading back. But not our way. And as if they were carrying the spoils? Of what?

Wislawa Szymborska (from VQR Online, Spring 2001, published 2003)

“A Little Bit About The Soul”

A soul is something we have every now and then. Nobody has one all the time or forever.Day after day, year after year, can go by without one.

Only sometimes in rapture or in the fears of childhood it nests a little longer. Only sometimes in the wonderment that we are old.

It rarely assists us during tiresome tasks, such as moving furniture, carrying suitcases, or traveling on foot in shoes too tight.

When we're filling out questionnaires or chopping meat it's usually given time off.

Out of our thousand conversations it participates in one, and even that isn't a given, for it prefers silence.

When the body starts to ache and ache it quietly steals from its post.

It's choosy: not happy to see us in crowds, sickened by our struggle for any old advantage and the drone of business dealings.

It doesn't see joy and sorrow as two different feelings. It is with us only in their union. We can count on it when we're not sure of anything and curious about everything.

Of all material objects it likes grandfather clocks and mirrors, which work diligently even when no one is looking. 43

It doesn't state where it comes from or when it will vanish again, but clearly it awaits such questions.

Evidently, just as we need it, it can also use us for something.

Wislawa Szymborska (from A Word on Statistics 1997)

“The People on the Bridge” An odd planet, and those on it are odd, too. They're subject to time, but they won't admit it. They have their own ways of expressing protest. They make up little pictures, like for instance this:

At first glance, nothing special. What you see is water. And one of its banks. And a little boat sailing strenuously upstream. And a bridge over the water, and people on the bridge. It appears that the people are picking up their pace because of the rain just beginning to lash down from a dark cloud.

The thing is, nothing else happens. The cloud doesn't change its color or its shape. The rain doesn't increase or subside. The boat sails on without moving. The people on the bridge are running now exactly where they ran before.

It's difficult at this point to keep from commenting. This picture is by no means innocent. Time has been stopped here. Its laws are no longer consulted. It has been relieved of its influence over the course of events. It has been ignored and insulted.

On account of a rebel, one Hiroshige Utagawa (a being who, by the way, died long ago and in due course), time has tripped and fallen down.

It might well be simply a trifling prank, an antic on the scale of just a couple of galaxies, let us, however, just in case, add one final comment for the record:

For generations, it's been considered good form here to think highly of this picture, to be entranced and moved.

There are those for whom even this is not enough. They go so far as to hear the rain's spatter, to feel the cold drops on their necks and backs, they look at the bridge and the people on it as if they saw themselves there, running the same never-to-be-finished race through the same endless, ever-to-be-covered distance, and they have the nerve to believe that this is really so. Wislawa Szymborska (from People on the Bridge 1996)

“The End and the Beginning” After every war someone’s got to tidy up. Things won’t pick themselves up, after all.

Someone’s got to shove the rubble to the roadsides so the carts loaded with corpses can get by.

Someone’s got to trudge through sludge and ashes, through the sofa springs, the shards of glass, the bloody rags.

Someone’s got to lug the post to prop the wall, someone’s got to glaze the window, set the door in its frame.

No sound bites, no photo opportunities and it takes years. All the cameras have gone to other wars.

The bridges need to be rebuilt, the railroad stations, too. Shirt sleeves will be rolled to shreds.

Someone, broom in hand, still remembers how it was. Someone else listens, nodding his unshattered head. But others are bound to be bustling nearby who’ll find all that a little boring.

From time to time someone still must dig up a rusted argument from underneath a bush and haul it off to the dump.

Those who knew what this was all about must make way for those who know little. And less than that. And at last nothing less than nothing.

Someone’s got to lie there in the grass that covers up the causes and effects with a cornstalk in his teeth, gawking at clouds.

Wislawa Szymborska (from The New Republic magazine 1993)

“Monologue of a Dog Ensnared in History” There are dogs and dogs. I was among the chosen. I had good papers and wolf's blood in my veins. I lived upon the heights inhaling the odors of views: meadows in sunlight, spruces after rain, and clumps of earth beneath the snow.

I had a decent home and people on call, I was fed, washed, groomed, and taken for lovely strolls. Respectfully, though, and comme il faut. They all knew full well whose dog I was.

Any lousy mutt can have a master. Take care, though --- beware comparisons. My master was a breed apart. He had a splendid herd that trailed his every step and fixed its eyes on him in fearful awe.

For me they always had smiles, with envy poorly hidden. Since only I had the right to greet him with nimble leaps, only I could say good-bye by worrying his trousers with my teeth. Only I was permitted to receive scratching and stroking with my head laid in his lap. Only I could feign sleep while he bent over me to whisper something.

He raged at others often, loudly. He snarled, barked, raced from wall to wall. I suspect he liked only me and nobody else, ever.

I also had responsibilities: waiting, trusting. Since he would turn up briefly, and then vanish. What kept him down there in the lowlands, I don't know. I guessed, though, it must be pressing business, at least as pressing as my battle with the cats and everything that moves for no good reason.

There's fate and fate. Mine changed abruptly. One spring came and he wasn't there. All hell broke loose at home. Suitcases, chests, trunks crammed into cars. 49

The wheels squealed tearing downhill and fell silent round the bend.

On the terrace scraps and tatters flamed, yellow shirts, armbands with black emblems and lots and lots of battered cartons with little banners tumbling out.

I tossed and turned in this whirlwind, more amazed than peeved. I felt unfriendly glances on my fur. As if I were a dog without a master, some pushy stray chased downstairs with a broom.

Someone tore my silver-trimmed collar off, someone kicked my bowl, empty for days. Then someone else, driving away, leaned out from the car and shot me twice.

He couldn't even shoot straight, since I died for a long time, in pain, to the buzz of impertinent flies. I, the dog of my master.

Wislawa Szymborska (from Monologue of a Dog Ensnared 2004)

“The Ball”

As long as nothing can be known for sure

(no signals have been picked up yet), as long as Earth is still unlike the nearer and more distant planets, as long as theres neither hide nor hair of other grasses graced by other winds, of other treetops bearing other crowns, other animals as well-grounded as our own, as long as only the local echo has been known to speak in syllables, as long as we still havent heard the word of better or worse mozarts, platos, edisons, elsewhere, as long as our inhuman crimes are still committed only between humans, as long as our kindness is still incomparable, peerless even in its imperfection, as long as our heads packed with illusions still pass for the only heads so packed, as long as the roofs of our mouths alone still raise voices to high heavens lets act like very special guests of honour at the district firemens ball, dance to the beat of the local oompah band and pretend that its the ball to end all balls.

I cant speak for other for me this is misery and happiness enough: just this sleepy backwater where even the stars have time to burn while winking at us unintentionally. Wislawa Szymborska (from The New Yorker magazine 2003)

“Identification”

It’s good you came—she says. You heard a plane crashed on Thursday? Well so they came to see me about it. The story is he was on the passenger list. So what, he might have changed his mind. They gave me some pills so I wouldn’t fall apart. Then they showed me I don’t know who. All black, burned except one hand. A scrap of shirt, a watch, a wedding ring. I got furious, that can’t be him. He wouldn’t do that to me, look like that. The stores are bursting with those shirts. The watch is just a regular old watch. And our names on that ring, they’re only the most ordinary names. It’s good you came. Sit here beside me. He really was supposed to get back Thursday. But we’ve got so many Thursdays left this year. I’ll put the kettle on for tea. I’ll wash my hair, then what, try to wake up from all this. It’s good you came, since it was cold there, and him just in some rubber sleeping bag, him, I mean, you know, that unlucky man. I’ll put the Thursday on, wash the tea, since our names are completely ordinary—

Wislawa Szymborska (from Poetry 2010)

“Maybe All This”

Maybe all this is happening in some lab? Under one lamp by day and billions by night?

Maybe we’re experimental generations? Poured from one vial to the next, shaken in test tubes, not scrutinized by eyes alone, each of us separately plucked up by tweezers in the end?

Or maybe it’s more like this: No interference? The changes occur on their own according to plan? The graph’s needle slowly etches its predictable zigzags?

Maybe thus far we aren’t of much interest? The control monitors aren’t usually plugged in? Only for wars, preferably large ones, for the odd ascent above our clump of Earth, for major migrations from point A to B?

Maybe just the opposite: They’ve got a taste for trivia up there? Look! on the big screen a little girl is sewing a button on her sleeve. The radar shrieks, the staff comes at a run. What a darling little being with its tiny heart beating inside it! How sweet, its solemn threading of the needle! Someone cries enraptured: Get the Boss, tell him he’s got to see this for himself!

Wislawa Szymborska (from The New Yorker 1992)

“Hitler’s First Photograph” And who's this little fellow in his itty-bitty robe? That's tiny baby Adolf, the Hitlers' little boy! Will he grow up to be an LL.D.? Or a tenor in Vienna's Opera House? Whose teensy hand is this, whose little ear and eye and nose? Whose tummy full of milk, we just don't know: printer's, doctor's, merchant's, priest's? Where will those tootsy-wootsies finally wander? To garden, to school, to an office, to a bride, maybe to the Burgermeister's daughter?

Precious little angel, mommy's sunshine, honey bun, while he was being born a year ago, there was no dearth of signs on the earth and in the sky: spring sun, geraniums in windows, the organ-grinder's music in the yard, a lucky fortune wrapped in rosy paper, then just before the labor his mother's fateful dream: a dove seen in dream means joyful news, if it is caught, a long-awaited guest will come. Knock knock, who's there, it's Adolf's heartchen knocking.

A little pacifier, diaper, rattle, bib, our bouncing boy, thank God and knock on wood, is well, looks just like his folks, like a kitten in a basket, like the tots in every other family album. Shush, let's not start crying, sugar, the camera will click from under that black hood.

The Klinger Atelier, Grabenstrasse, Braunen, and Braunen is a small but worthy town, honest businesses, obliging neighbors, smell of yeast dough, of gray soap. No one hears howling dogs, or fate's footsteps. A history teacher loosens his collar and yawns over homework.

Wislawa Szymborska (from View with a Grain of Sand 1996)

“A Funeral”

"so suddenly, who would've expected this" "stress and cigarettes, I was warning him" "fair to middling, thanks" "unwrap these flowers" "his brother snuffed because of his ticker too, must be running in the family" "I'd never recognise you with your beard" "it's all his fault, he was always up to some funny business" "the new one was to give a speech, can't see him, though" "Kazek's in Warsaw and Tadek abroad" "you're the only wise one here, having an umbrella" "it won't help him now that he was the most talented of them all" "that's a connecting room. Baśka won't like it" "he was right, true, but that's not the reason for" "with door varnishing, guess how much" "two eggs and a spoonful of sugar" "none of his business, what was the point then" "blue and small sizes only" "five times and never a single answer" "I'll give your that, I could've, but so could you" "so good at least she had that job" "I've no idea, must be relatives" "the priest, very much like Belmondo" "I've never been to this part of the cemetery" "I saw him in my dream last week, must've been a premonition" "pretty, that little daughter" "we're all going to end up this way" "give mine to the widow, I've got to hurry to" "but still it sounded more solemn in Latin" "you can't turn back the clock" "goodbye" "how about a beer" "give me a ring, we'll have a chat" "number four or number twelve" "me, this way" "we, that way".

Wislawa Szymborska (from View with a Grain of Sand 1957)

“Reality Demands”

Reality demands that we also mention this: Life goes on. It continues at Cannae and Borodino, at Kosovo Polje and Guernica.

There’s a gas station on a little square in Jericho, and wet paint on park benches in Bila Hora. Letters fly back and forth between Pearl Harbor and Hastings, a moving van passes beneath the eye of the lion at Chaeronea, and the blooming orchards near Verdun cannot escape the approaching atmospheric front.

There is so much Everything that Nothing is hidden quite nicely. Music pours from the yachts moored at Actium and couples dance on the sunlit decks.

So much is always going on, that it must be going on all over. Where not a stone still stands, you see the Ice Cream Man besieged by children. Where Hiroshima had been Hiroshima is again, producing many products for everyday use. This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.

The grass is green on Maciejowice’s fields, and it is studded with dew, as is normal grass.

Perhaps all fields are battlefields, those we remember

56 and those that are forgotten: the birch forests and the cedar forests, the snow and the sand, the iridescent swamps and the canyons of black defeat, where now, when the need strikes, you don’t cower under a bush but squat behind it.

What moral flows from this? Probably none. Only that blood flows, drying quickly, and, as always, a few rivers, a few clouds.

On tragic mountain passes the wind rips hats from unwitting heads and we can’t help laughing at that.

Wislawa Szymborska (from The New Yorker 1993)

“Brueghel’s Two Monkeys”

This is what I see in my dreams about final exams: two monkeys, chained to the floor, sit on the windowsill, the sky behind them flutters, the sea is taking its bath.

The exam is History of Mankind. I stammer and hedge.

One monkey stares and listens with mocking disdain, the other seems to be dreaming away– but when it’s clear I don’t know what to say he prompts me with a gentle clinking of his chain. Wislawa Szymborska (from The New Yorker 1993)

“I'm Working on the World”

I'm working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools, blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs.

Here's one chapter: The Speech of Animals and Plants. Each species comes, of course, with its own dictionary. Even a simple "Hi there," when traded with a fish, make both the fish and you feel quite extraordinary.

The long-suspected meanings of rustlings, chirps, and growls! Soliloquies of forests! The epic hoot of owls! Those crafty hedgehogs drafting aphorisms after dark, while we blindly believe they are sleeping in the park!

Time (Chapter Two) retains its sacred right to meddle in each earthly affair. Still, time's unbounded power that makes a mountain crumble, moves seas, rotates a star, won't be enough to tear lovers apart: they are too naked, too embraced, too much like timid sparrows.

Old age is, in my book, the price that felons pay, so don't whine that it's steep: you'll stay young if you're good. Suffering (Chapter Three) doesn't insult the body. Death? It comes in your sleep, exactly as it should.

When it comes, you'll be dreaming that you don't need to breathe; 59 that breathless silence is the music of the dark and it's part of the rhythm to vanish like a spark. Only a death like that. A rose could prick you harder, I suppose; you'd feel more terror at the sound of petals falling to the ground.

Only a world like that. To die just that much. And to live just so. And all the rest is Bach's fugue, played for the time being on a saw.

Wislawa Szymborska (from The New Yorker 1998)

“Return Baggage”

The cemetery plot for tiny graves. We, the long lived, pass by furtively, like wealthy people slums.

Here lie little Zosia, Jacek, Dominik, prematurely stripped of the sun, the moon, the clouds, the turning seasons.

They didn’t stash much in their return bags. Some scraps of sights that scarcely count as plural. A fistful of air with a butterfly flitting. A spoonful of bitter knowledge – the tast of medicine.

Small-scale naughtiness, granted, some of it fatal. Gaily chasing the ball across the road. The happiness of skating on thin ice.

This one here, that one down tehre, those on the end” before they gre to reach a doorknob, break a watch, smash their first windowpane.

Malgorzata, four years old, two of them spent staring at the ceiling.

Rafalek: missed his fifth birthday by a month, and Zuzia missed Christmas, when misty breath turns to frost. And what can you say about one day of life, a minute, a second: darkness, a lightbulb’s flash, then dark again?

KOSMOS MAKROS CHRONOS PARADOKSOS Only stony Greek has words for that.

Wislawa Szymborska (from The New Yorker 2004)

“A Little Girl Tugs at the Tablecloth”

She’s been in this world for over a year, and in this world not everything’s been examined and taken in hand.

The subject of today’s investigation is things that don’t move by themselves.

They need to be helped along, shoved, shifted, taken from their place and relocated.

They don’t all want to go, e.g., the bookshelf, the cupboard, the unyielding walls, the table.

But the tablecloth on the stubborn table —when well-seized by its hems— manifests a willingness to travel.

And the glasses, plates, creamer, spoons, bowl, are fairly shaking with desire.

It’s fascinating, what form of motion will they take, once they’re trembling on the brink: will they roam across the ceiling? fly around the lamp? hop onto the windowsill and from there to a tree?

Mr. Newton still has no say in this. Let him look down from the heavens and wave his hands.

This experiment must be completed. And it will.

Wisława Szymborska (from The New Yorker 2004)

“The Kindness of the Blind”

A poet is reading to the blind. He did not suspect it was so hard. His voice is breaking. His hands are shaking. He feels that here each sentence is put to the test of the dark. It will have to fend for itself without the lights or colors. A perilous adventure for the stars in his poems, for the dawn, the rainbow, the clouds, neon lights, the moon, for the fish until now so silver under water, and the hawk so silently high in the sky. He is reading---for it is too late to stop--- of a boy in a jacket yellow in the green meadow, of red rooftops easy to spot in the valley, the restless numbers on the players' shirts, and a nude stranger in the door cracked open. He would like to pass over---though it's not an option--- all those saints on the cathedral's ceiling, that farewell wave from the train window, the microscope lens, ray of light in the gem, video screens, and mirrors, and the album with faces. Yet great is the kindness of the blind, great their compassion and generosity. They listen, smile, and clap. One of them even approaches with a book held topsy-turvy to ask for an invisible autograph.

Wislawa Szymborska (from The New Yorker 2004)

“ABC”

I’ll never find out now What A. thought of me. If B. ever forgave me in the end. Why C. pretended everything was fine. What part D. played in E’s silence. What F. had been expecting, if anything. Why G. forgot when she knew perfectly well. What H. had to hide. What I. wanted to add. If my being around meant anything to J. and K. and the rest of the alphabet.

Wislawa Szymborska (from The New Yorker 2004)

“Everything”

Everything – a smug and bumptious word. It should be written in quotes. It pretends to miss nothing, to gather, hold, contain, and have. While all the while it’s just a shred of gale.

Wislawa Szymborska (from The New Yorker 2005)

“A Note”

Life is the only way to get covered in leaves, catch your breath on the sand, rise on wings; to be a dog, or stroke its warm fur; to tell pain from everything it’s not; to squeeze inside events, dawdle in views, to seek the least of all possible mistakes. An extraordinary chance to remember for a moment a conversation held with the lamp switched off; and if only once to stumble on a stone, end up soaked in one downpour or another, mislay your keys in the grass; and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes; and to keep on not knowing something important.

Wislawa Szymborska (from The New Yorker 2005)

“Perspective”

They passed like strangers, without a word or gesture, her off to the store, him heading for the car.

Perhaps startled or distracted, or forgetting that for a short while they’d been in love forever.

Still, there’s no guarantee that it was them. Maybe yes from a distance, but not close up.

I watched them from the window, and those who observe from above are often mistaken.

She vanished beyond the glass door. He got in behind the wheel and took off. As if nothing had happened, if it had.

And I, sure for just a moment that I’d seen it, strive to convince you, O Readers, with this accidental little poem that it was sad.

Wislawa Szymborska (from The New Yorker 2006)

“While Sleeping”

I dreamed I was looking for something, maybe hidden somewhere or lost under the bed, under the stairs, under an old address.

I dug through wardrobes, boxes and drawers pointlessly packed with stuff and nonsense.

I pulled from my suitcases the years and journeys I’d picked up.

I shook from my pockets withered letters, litter, leaves not addressed to me.

I ran panting through comforting, discomfiting displaces, places.

I floundered through tunnels of snow and unremembrance.

I got stuck in thorny thickets and conjectures.

I swam through air and the grass of childhood.

I hustled to finish up before the outdated dusk fell, the curtain, silence.

In the end I stopped knowing what I’d been looking for so long.

I woke up. Looked at my watch. The dream took not quite two and a half minutes.

Such are the tricks to which time resorts ever since it started stumbling on sleeping heads.

Wislawa Szymborska (from Map: Collected and Last Poems 2012)

“A Great Man's House”

It was written in marble in golden letters: here a great man lived and worked and died. He laid the gravel for these paths personally. This bench — do not touch — he chiseled by himself out of stone. And — careful, three steps — we're going inside.

He made it into the world at just the right time. Everything that had to pass, passed in this house. Not in a high rise, not in square feet, furnished yet empty, amidst unknown neighbors, on some fifteenth floor, where it's hard to drag school field trips.

In this room he pondered, in this chamber he slept, and over here he entertained guests. Portraits, an armchair, a desk, a pipe, a globe, a flute, a worn-out rug, a sun room. From here he exchanged nods with his tailor and shoemaker who custom made for him.

This is not the same as photographs in boxes, dried out pens in a plastic cup, a store-bought wardrobe in a store-bought closet, a window, from which you can see clouds better than people.

Happy? Unhappy? That's not relevant here. He still confided in his letters, without thinking they would be opened on their way. He still kept a detailed and honest diary, without the fear that he would lose it during a search. The passing of a comet worried him most. The destruction of the world was only in the hands of God.

He still managed not to die in the hospital, behind a white screen, who knows which one. There was still someone with him who remembered his muttered words.

He partook of life as if it were reusable: he sent his books to be bound; he wouldn't cross out the last names of the dead from his address book. And the trees he had planted in the garden behind the house grew for him as Juglans regia and Quercus rubra and Ulmus and Larix and Fraxinus excelsior. Wislawa Szymborska (from Poetry 1997)

“A 'Thank You' Note”

There is much I owe to those I do not love. The relief in accepting they are closer to another. Joy that I am not the wolf to their sheep. My peace be with them for with them I am free, and this, love can neither give, nor know how to take. I don't wait for them from window to door. Almost as patient as a sun dial, I understand what love does not understand. I forgive what love would never have forgiven. Between rendezvous and letter no eternity passes, only a few days or weeks. My trips with them always turn out well. Concerts are heard. Cathedrals are toured. Landscapes are distinct. And when seven rivers and mountains come between us, they are rivers and mountains well known from any map. It is thanks to them that I live in three dimensions, in a non-lyrical and non-rhetorical space, with a shifting, thus real, horizon. They don't even know how much they carry in their empty hands. 'I don't owe them anything', love would have said on this open topic.

Wislawa Szymborska (from Map: Collected and Last Poems 1976)

“Advertisement”

I’m a tranquilizer. I’m effective at home. I work in the office. I can take exams on the witness stand. I mend broken cups with care. All you have to do is take me, let me melt beneath your tongue, just gulp me with a glass of water.

I know how to handle misfortune, how to take bad news. I can minimize injustice, lighten up God’s absence, or pick the widow’s veil that suits your face. What are you waiting for— have faith in my chemical compassion.

You’re still a young man/woman. It’s not too late to learn how to unwind. Who said you have to take it on the chin?

Let me have your abyss. I’ll cushion it with sleep. You’ll thank me for giving you four paws to fall on.

Sell me your soul. There are no other takers.

There is no other devil anymore.

Wislawa Szymborska (from Poems New and Selected 1998)

“Children Of The Age”

We are children of our age, it's a political age.

All day long, all through the night, all affairs--yours, ours, theirs-- are political affairs.

Whether you like it or not, your genes have a political past, your skin, a political cast, your eyes, a political slant.

Whatever you say reverberates, whatever you don't say speaks for itself. So either way you're talking politics.

Even when you take to the woods, you're taking political steps on political grounds.

Apolitical poems are also political, and above us shines a moon no longer purely lunar. To be or not to be, that is the question. And though it troubles the digestion it's a question, as always, of politics.

To acquire a political meaning you don't even have to be human. Raw material will do, or protein feed, or crude oil, or a conference table whose shape was quarreled over for months; Should we arbitrate life and death at a round table or a square one?

Meanwhile, people perished, animals died, houses burned, and the fields ran wild just as in times immemorial and less political.

Wislawa Szymborska (from Poems New and Collected 1988) 73

“Clouds”

Clouds

I’d have to be really quick to describe clouds - a split second’s enough for them to start being something else.

Their trademark: they don’t repeat a single shape, shade, pose, arrangement.

Unburdened by memory of any kind, they float easily over the facts.

What on earth could they bear witness to? They scatter whenever something happens.

Compared to clouds, life rests on solid ground, practically permanent, almost eternal.

Next to clouds even a stone seems like a brother, someone you can trust, while they’re just distant, flighty cousins.

Let people exist if they want, and then die, one after another: clouds simply don't care what they're up to down there.

And so their haughty fleet cruises smoothly over your whole life and mine, still incomplete.

They aren't obliged to vanish when we're gone. They don't have to be seen while sailing on.

Wislawa Szymborska (from Poems New and Collected)

“Consolation”

Darwin. They say he read novels to relax, But only certain kinds: nothing that ended unhappily. If anything like that turned up, enraged, he flung the book into the fire.

True or not, I’m ready to believe it.

Scanning in his mind so many times and places, he’d had enough of dying species, the triumphs of the strong over the weak, the endless struggles to survive, all doomed sooner or later. He’d earned the right to happy endings, at least in fiction with its diminutions.

Hence the indispensable silver lining, the lovers reunited, the families reconciled, the doubts dispelled, fidelity rewarded, fortunes regained, treasures uncovered, stiff-necked neighbors mending their ways, good names restored, greed daunted, old maids married off to worthy parsons, troublemakers banished to other hemispheres, forgers of documents tossed down the stairs, seducers scurrying to the altar, orphans sheltered, widows comforted, pride humbled, wounds healed over, prodigal sons summoned home, cups of sorrow thrown into the ocean, hankies drenched with tears of reconciliation, general merriment and celebration, and the dog Fido, gone astray in the first chapter, turns up barking gladly in the last.

Wislawa Szymborska (from Poetry 2006)

“Could Have”

It could have happened. It had to happen. It happened earlier. Later. Nearer. Farther off. It happened, but not to you. You were saved because you were the first. You were saved because you were the last. Alone. With others. On the right. The left. Because it was raining. Because of the shade. Because the day was sunny.

You were in luck -- there was a forest. You were in luck -- there were no trees. You were in luck -- a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake, A jamb, a turn, a quarter-inch, an instant . . .

So you're here? Still dizzy from another dodge, close shave, reprieve? One hole in the net and you slipped through? I couldn't be more shocked or speechless. Listen, how your heart pounds inside me.

Wislawa Szymborska (from View with a Grain of Sand 1996)

“Dreams”

Despite the geologists’ knowledge and craft, mocking magnets, graphs, and maps— in a split second the dream piles before us mountains as stony as real life.

And since mountains, then valleys, plains with perfect infrastructures. Without engineers, contractors, workers, bulldozers, diggers, or supplies— raging highways, instant bridges, thickly populated pop-up cities.

Without directors, megaphones, and cameramen— crowds knowing exactly when to frighten us and when to vanish.

Without architects deft in their craft, without carpenters, bricklayers, concrete pourers— on the path a sudden house just like a toy, and in it vast halls that echo with our steps and walls constructed out of solid air.

Not just the scale, it’s also the precision— a specific watch, an entire fly, on the table a cloth with cross-stitched flowers, a bitten apple with teeth marks.

And we—unlike circus acrobats, conjurers, wizards, and hypnotists— can fly unfledged, we light dark tunnels with our eyes, we wax eloquent in unknown tongues, talking not with just anyone, but with the dead.

And as a bonus, despite our own freedom, the choices of our heart, our tastes, we’re swept away by amorous yearnings for— and the alarm clock rings.

So what can they tell us, the writers of dream books, the scholars of oneiric signs and omens, the doctors with couches for analyses— if anything fits, it’s accidental, and for one reason only, 77 that in our dreamings, in their shadowings and gleamings, in their multiplings, inconceivablings, in their haphazardings and widescatterings at times even a clear-cut meaning may slip through.

Wislawa Szymborska (from Poetry 2010)

“Going Home”

He came home. Said nothing. It was clear, though, that something had gone wrong. He lay down fully dressed. Pulled the blanket over his head. Tucked up his knees. He's nearly forty, but not at the moment. He exists just as he did inside his mother's womb, clad in seven walls of skin, in sheltered darkness. Tomorrow he'll give a lecture on homeostasis in metagalactic cosmonautics. For now, though, he has curled up and gone to sleep.

Wislawa Szymborska (from Poems New and Collected)

“The Suicide’s Room”

You certainly think that the room was empty. Yet it had three chairs with sturdy backs. And a lamp effective against the dark. A desk, on the desk a wallet, some newspapers. An unsorrowful Buddha, a sorrowful Jesus. Seven good-luck elephants, and in a drawer a notebook. You think that our addresses were not there?

You think there were no books, pictures, records? But there was a consoling trumpet in black hands. Saskia with a hearfelt flower of love. Joy the fair spark of the gods. Odysseus on the shelf in life-giving sleep after the labours of Book Five. Moralists, their names imprinted in syllables of gold on beautifully tanned spines. Right next, statesmen standing straight.

And not without a way out, if only through the door, not without prospects, if only through the window, that is how the room looked. Distance glasses lay on the windowsill. A single fly buzzed, that is, was still alive.

You think at least the note made something clear. Now what if I tell you that there was no note - and so many of us, friends of his, yet all could fit in the empty envelope propped against the glass.

Wislawa Szymborska (from Poems New and Collected)

“Miracle Fair”

Commonplace miracle: that so many commonplace miracles happen.

An ordinary miracle: in the dead of night the barking of invisible dogs.

One miracle out of many: a small, airy cloud yet it can block a large and heavy moon.

Several miracles in one: an alder tree reflected in the water, and that it's backwards left to right and that it grows there, crown down and never reaches the bottom, even though the water is shallow.

An everyday miracle: winds weak to moderate turning gusty in storms.

First among equal miracles: cows are cows.

Second to none: just this orchard from just that seed.

A miracle without a cape and top hat: scattering white doves.

A miracle, for what else could you call it: today the sun rose at three-fourteen and will set at eight-o-one.

A miracle, less surprising than it should be: even though the hand has fewer than six fingers, it still has more than four.

A miracle, just take a look around: the world is everywhere.

An additional miracle, as everything is additional: the unthinkable is thinkable. Wislawa Szymborska (from Miracle Fair 2001) 81

“Negative”

Negative

Against a grayisch sky a grayer cloud rimmed black by the sun.

On the left, that is, the right, a white cherry branch with black blossoms.

Light shadows on your dark face. You'd just taken a seat at the table and put your hands, gone pray, upon it.

You look like a ghost who's trying to summon up the living.

(And since I still number among them, I should appear to him and tap: good night, that is, good morning, farewell, that is, hello.

And not grudge questions to any of his answers concerning life, that storm before the clam).

Wislawa Szymborska (from Poems New and Collected)

“Museum” Here are plates with no appetite. And wedding rings, but the requited love has been gone now for some three hundred years.

Here’s a fan–where is the maiden’s blush? Here are swords–where is the ire? Nor will the lute sound at the twilight hour.

Since eternity was out of stock, ten thousand aging things have been amassed instead. The moss-grown guard in golden slumber props his mustache on Exhibit Number…

Eight. Metals, clay and feathers celebrate their silent triumphs over dates. Only some Egyptian flapper’s silly hairpin giggles.

The crown has outlasted the head. The hand has lost out to the glove. The right shoe has defeated the foot.

As for me, I am still alive, you see. The battle with my dress still rages on. It struggles, foolish thing, so stubbornly! Determined to keep living when I’m gone!

Wislawa Szymborska (from Poems New and Collected 1996)

“Cat in an Empty Apartment”

Die - you can't do that to a cat. Since what can a cat do in an empty apartment? Climb the walls? Rub up against the furniture? Nothing seems different here, but nothing is the same. Nothing has been moved, but there's more space. And at nighttime no lamps are lit.

Footsteps on the staircase, but they're new ones. The hand that puts fish on the saucer has changed, too.

Something doesn't start at its usual time. Something doesn't happen as it should. Someone was always, always here, then suddenly disappeared and stubbornly stays disappeared.

Every closet has been examined. Every shelf has been explored. Excavations under the carpet turned up nothing. A commandment was even broken, papers scattered everywhere. What remains to be done. Just sleep and wait.

Just wait till he turns up, just let him show his face. Will he ever get a lesson on what not to do to a cat. Sidle toward him as if unwilling and ever so slow on visibly offended paws, and no leaps or squeals at least to start.

Wislawa Szymborska (from View with a Grain of Sand)

“A Large Number”

Four billion people on this earth, but my imagination is the way it's always been: bad with large numbers. It is still moved by particularity. It flits about the darkness like a flashlight beam, disclosing only random faces, while the rest go blindly by, unthought of, unpitied. Not even a Dante could have stopped that. So what do you do when you're not, even with all the muses on your side?

Non omnis moriar—a premature worry. Yet am I fully alive, and is that enough? It never has been, and even less so now. I select by rejecting, for there's no other way, but what I reject, is more numerous, more dense, more intrusive than ever. At the cost of untold losses—a poem, a sigh. I reply with a whisper to a thunderous calling. How much I am silent about I can't say. A mouse at the foot of mother mountain. Life lasts as long as a few lines of claws in the sand.

My dreams—even they are not as populous as they should be. There is more solitude in them than crowds or clamor. Sometimes someone long dead will drop by for a bit. A single hand turns a knob. Annexes of echo overgrow the empty house. I run from the threshold down into the quiet valley seemingly no one's—an anachronism by now.

Where does all this space still in me come from— that I don't know.

Wislawa Szymborska (from View with a Grain of Sand 1993)

“In Praise of Self-Deprecation”

The buzzard never says it is to blame. The panther wouldn't know what scruples mean. When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame. If snakes had hands, they'd claim their hands were clean.

A jackal doesn't understand remorse. Lions and lice don't waver in their course. Why should they, when they know they're right?

Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton, in every other way they're light.

On this third planet of the sun among the signs of bestiality a clear conscience is Number One.

Wislawa Szymborska (from Poems New and Collected)

“An Interview with Atropos”

Madam Atropos?

That’s correct.

Of Necesssity’s three daughters, you fare the worst in world opinion.

A gross exaggeration, my dear poet. Klotho spins the threat of life, but the thread is delicate and easily cut. Lachesis determines its length with her rod. They are no angels.

Still you, Madame, hold the scissors.

And since I do, I put them to good use.

I see that even as we speak …

I’m a Type A, that’s my nature.

You don’t get bored or tired, maybe drowsy working nights? Really, not the slightest? With no holidays, vacations, weekends, no quick breaks for cigarettes?

We’d fall behind, I don’t like that.

Such breathtaking industry. But you’re not given commendations, orders, trophies, cups, awards? Maybe just a framed diploma?

Like at the hairdresser’s? No, thank you.

Who, if anyone, assists you?

A tidy little paradox—you mortals. Assorted dictators, untold fanatics. Not that they need me to nudge them. They’re eager to get down to work.

Wars must surely make you happy what with all the assistance you receive.

Happy? I don’t know the feeling. 87

I’m not the one who declares them, I’m not the one who steers their course. I will admit, though, that I’m grateful, they do help to keep me au courant.

You’re not sorry for the threads cut short?

A little shorter, a lot shorter— Only you perceive the difference.

And if someone stronger wanted to relieve you, tried to make you take retirement?

I don’t follow. Express yourself more clearly.

I’ll try once more: do you have a Higher-Up?

… Next question please.

That’s all I’ve got.

Well goodbye then. Or to put it more precisely …

I know, I know. Au revoir.

Wislawa Szymborska (from Map: Collected and Last Poems)

“No End of Fun”

So he's got to have happiness, he's got to have truth, too, he's got to have eternity did you ever!

He has only just learned to tell dreams from waking; only just realized that he is he; only just whittled with his hand ne' fin a flint, a rocket ship; easily drowned in the ocean's teaspoon, not even funny enough to tickle the void; sees only with his eyes; hears only with his ears; his speech's personal best is the conditional; he uses his reason to pick holes in reason. In short, he's next to no one, but his head's full of freedom, omniscience, and the Being beyond his foolish meat - did you ever!

For he does apparently exist. He genuinely came to be beneath one of the more parochial stars. He's lively and quite active in his fashion. His capacity for wonder is well advanced for a crystal's deviant descendant. And considering his difficult childhood spent kowtowing to the herd's needs, he's already quite an individual indeed - did you ever!

Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink! One wonders what will become of him, since he does in fact seem to be. And as far as being goes, he really tries quite hard. Quite hard indeed - one must admit. With that ring in his nose, with that toga, that sweater. He's no end of fun, for all you say. Poor little beggar. A human, if ever we saw one.

Wislawa Szymborska (from Poems New and Collected 1967)

“Plato, or Why on Earth”

For reasons unclear, and in circumstances unknown, the Ideal ceased to be content with itself.

It could have gone on and on with no end, carved away from darkness, chiseled out of light, in its dreamy gardens above.

So why on Earth did it seek excitement in the bad company of matter?

Why did it need enthusiasts among the non-starters, born losers, with no prospects for eternity?

Wisdom on crutches with a thorn deep in its heel? Harmony torn apart by stormy waters? Beauty with aesthetically displeasing intestines and Good —why with a shadow if it used to be without?

There had to be a reason, inconsequential as it seemed, but it won’t be betrayed even by the Naked Truth, busily sifting through its earhtly attire.

And to top it all off, Plato, those intolerable poets, the gust-borne shavings off the monuments, scraps of the grand highland Silence…

Wislawa Szymborska (from Poems New and Collected)

“Psalm”

Oh, the leaky boundaries of man-made states! How many clouds float past them with impunity; how much desert sand shifts from one land to another; how many mountain pebbles tumble onto foreign soil in provocative hops! Need I mention every single bird that flies in the face of frontiers or alights on the roadblock at the border? A humble robin - still, its tail resides abroad while its beak stays home. If that weren't enough, it won't stop bobbing! Among innumerable insects, I'll single out only the ant between the border guard's left and right boots blithely ignoring the questions "Where from?" and "Where to?" Oh, to register in detail, at a glance, the chaos prevailing on every continent! Isn't that a privet on the far bank smuggling its hundred-thousandth leaf across the river? And who but the octopus, with impudent long arms, would disrupt the sacred bounds of territorial waters? And how can we talk of order overall? when the very placement of the stars leaves us doubting just what shines for whom? Not to speak of the fog's reprehensible drifting! And dust blowing all over the steppes as if they hadn't been partitioned! And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves, that conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters! Only what is human can truly be foreign. The rest is mixed vegetation, subversive moles, and wind.

Wislawa Szymborska (from Poems New and Collected 1976)

“Vietnam”

"Woman, what's your name?" "I don't know." "How old are you? Where are you from?" "I don't know." "Why did you dig that burrow?" "I don't know." "How long have you been hiding?" "I don't know." "Why did you bite my finger?" "I don't know." "Don't you know that we won't hurt you?" "I don't know." "Whose side are you on?" "I don't know." "This is war, you've got to choose." "I don't know." " Does your village still exist?" "I don't know." "Are those your children?" "Yes."

Wislawa Szymborska (from Poems New and Collected)